NOTES for Act 5:1-16
Today's reading presents the Kingdom from a somewhat unexpected angle. At first glance, the story of Ananias and Sapphira as described here might seem to testify to God's severity and the harshness of the Kingdom's laws. Indeed, is death not too harsh a punishment for deception (vv. 2–3, 8–10)? Yet a different logic evidently operates in the Kingdom: complete freedom together with complete responsibility. Apparently, in the earliest Christian community, no one was compelled on joining to donate everything they owned to the Church. Each person could evidently decide how much to give (v. 4). If someone gave everything, they did so wholeheartedly, fully aware of their responsibility for what they were doing (Acts 4:34–37). In this case, however, it happened differently. Ananias apparently did not understand very well the degree of freedom and responsibility that life in the Kingdom entails. Perhaps giving to the community seemed to him something like the Temple tithe that every Jew was required to pay. On joining the community, he therefore decided to observe the prescribed rule while allowing himself a few concessions. But it turned out that this was not simply about joining a community; it was nothing less than entering the Kingdom, where there is no place for deceit. The principle proved simple: give what you can, but do so with absolute openness. There are no rules, only the righteousness of the Kingdom, which imposes no limits other than those a person sets for themselves. But that righteousness allows neither deception nor duplicity. Those who deceive God die not because God is cruel. It is simply that someone who has tasted the Kingdom's life can never again do without it. Yet it is equally impossible to remain in the Kingdom without trusting God completely: keeping two sets of books has no place here. That is why Ananias and Sapphira die. There is no middle ground in the Kingdom: here there is either life in all its fullness or death in all its inevitability. In our world, not yet transfigured, it is possible not to live fully, to drag out an existence spiritually more like death than life, and yet not die physically. In the Kingdom this is impossible: here life is complete, and death too is complete. There is no third way.